internatinal women's day 03.08.10

International Women's Day, 2010 | Chicago Art Department | 1837 S. Halsted, Chicago, IL 60608 | 6-10 PM - Multi-media group show | Live performance | http://www.chicagartdepartment.org/

her story - work in progress - photo collage & mixed media - avisheh mohsenin 2010

It is the middle of a night in 1983; the sirens go on, it is a ‘red’ one announcing that bombers are approaching Tehran.  We need to wake up and take refuge.  Mom comes and nicely tries to wake us up, we resist, we like the adrenaline rush, we don’t comprehend what dying under rubbles means, we like her close by; we are 7 and 9.  She pulls me and my sister out of our beds and we join the neighbors under the staircases, in the refuge.  There is fear, there is uncertainty and anticipation, crying, prayers, mumbling, and a lot of closeness waiting for fate to make its passage.  Mom consoles the scared ones until the ‘white’ sirens allow us to go back.

It is the first Saturday of the month in 1984, time to visit Dad in prison.  Mom drives us and grandma to the suburbs where the jail is, in the middle of an arid land, behind gray tall walls, with a lot of families outside, waiting.  There is anticipation of whether a visit would be granted or not; how the prisoner looks like and feels like this time around; do they have a sentence yet?   We make friends, we missed school. It is fun.  We play.  Mom waits in lines for hours along with other wives and mothers of political prisoners.  We finally get in to the other side of the walls. Waiting again behind an ugly metal for our names to be called.  ‘Mohsenin Family. Next.’  We stand up, before going in, Mom stops us and says: ‘pull your shirt’s red sleeves and roll it over the gray sleeves.” We are in our gray uniforms matching the Islamic scarves. ‘Let him see some color,’ Mom says.  We go in, Dad behind the glass windows, we both pick up the phone receivers to talk.  ‘Nice shirts girls, you look good in red!’ says Dad.

It is March 19^th, Mom is still not home.  We worry about Nowruz (Persian New Year) and not having something new to wear. How sacrilege, how unprecedented.  How can she work so late when we don’t have anything new for the new year? Where is she? We go to bed looking at the new shiny black shoes that don’t have a dress to go with.  We wake up in the morning. Worried.  Roll out of bed and there they are, two beautifully sown red dresses, customized, lovely, and brand new.  Mom stayed up all night to finish them after she got back from work, late.

Middle school. All girls. Dark blue uniforms with matching scarves.  Ugly but agile.  Nazi Principals and Superintendents.  Random bag searches.  Mandatory fasting during Ramadan.  Pop quiz on religion.  Also laughter, running around, youth, playfulness, smuggled Michael Jackson and Madonna tapes, photos of American pop stars, love notes, dirty jokes, giggles, innocence at the intersection of adolescence.  One morning, I get singled out of the line and called into the Principal’s office.  Are you a boy? No.  Is here a campsite? No.  Are we hiking? No.  So why are you carrying a backpack? a red one, no less!?  Next day.  Mom comes in, with a hat of logic and an intent of educating via communicating.  She talks to the Principal for a while behind closed doors explaining that an 11 year old girl can use a backpack and that it means absolutely nothing.  Principal responding that it is Westernized, it is boyish, it is not feminine and that she searches her daughter’s schoolbag every night after the 13 year old goes to bed, suggesting my mother does the same! Whatever else was said during this ‘1984’ discussion, the result was that my sister and I got to keep our red backpacks that year, and half of the school started carrying backpacks the following year. Mom wins. We win. Red backpacks win.

It is sometimes between 1982-1984. Dad is in Khomeini’s political prison. After a year of monthly visits, they grant us a ‘family visit’ to spend the night in prison with him.  Mom starts packing for this one-in-a-lifetime opportunity.  Without saying it, everyone fears that this might be the last time we all touch him, it might indeed be why such a visit is granted.  There is excitement anyway.  A one-on-one visit, without the glass separation and talking via phones on both sides, without a limit that cuts your conversation abruptly in the middle, without dragging your hands on the glass to feel like you are touching him, without the visitors moving away from the glasses and out of the room, with their heads 180 degrees turned back as the inmates line up on the other side going the opposite way, with their heads at 180 degrees.  Mom starts packing. I am happy for her. I have probably heard about love making, or a version of it perhaps.  As she packs our bags and hers, she drops a pack of feminine hygiene pads into hers and says out loud: ‘so that they know it is not all about sex.’ As if she feels this visit is an act of pitying or teasing.  She doesn’t have her period.  She doesn’t get them anymore. She stopped at age 37 because of the shock of her husband not coming home one day and her having to go claim him at the local jail.  Or maybe she stopped getting her period -20 years before it was due- the day that her friend she had made in lines at the prison called with a shaky voice. ‘They just called. They want me there. Will you please go with me?’ They went, and all they got, was a pack of the woman’s husband’s clothes, thrown at her without any explanations. He was executed.  My mom had to collect her and her pile of clothes from the ground and take her back to her house.  Maybe they both stopped having their periods that day.  She at 28, my mother at 38.

These stories and alike have fascinated me with the life of my mother as the woman, the mother, the worker, the wife, the political prisoner’s family, the daughter, the poetess, the teacher, the lover, the feminist, the friend, the sister, and the artist.  I saw glimpses of each one of these characteristics as we grew up but I still do not grasp fully everything that she was.  I have reached an age that I remember her vividly when she was my age and I keep asking myself, how did she do it all? What went on in her heart and in her mind?  What would she do differently? What were her frustrations? her fantasies?  And most importantly how did she manage do all she did so delicately, so smoothly in such a dark and hard era in Iran.

I have started an ongoing project discovering my mother and her journey as a woman.  She taught me and my sister to be independent, proud women, strong but loving, fierce but soft, ambitious but balanced, and never to be a victim.  I would like to discover how, and as I do so I would like to create a series that pays homage to her and all that she is about.

 

 

installation view: her story - work in progress - photo collage & mixed media - avisheh mohsenin 2010